Cobweb

With "Friends" Like These ...

After indulging one of my many addictions this morning, I was given another reason to quit: poor etiquette of fellow addicts.

I'm not talking about missing the ashtray with the burned end of a Marlboro. My problem is Facebook, and what I feel is poor etiquette of so-called Facebook "friends."

It's enough of a problem that Facebook is starting to interfere with my other time-intensive addictions, one of which is TiVo and the sporting events it records for me. Facebook is a drain on time, and so is watching TiVo'd sporting events, like the daily three-to-four hour broadcast of the Tour de France on Versus. After all, if I don't have time to watch when it airs in the wee hours of the morning, how is it that I think I can find time to squeeze it in later in the day? But the more important question is, why do I bother?

Today I made the mistake of taking a peek at Facebook before joining Tour de France commentators Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin for their call of Stage Eight's adventure into the Alps. One of my "friends" had posted her status, expressing her disappointment in the day's stage result and including details of how the race played out.

Please. If I wanted to find out from Facebook that that Lance Armstrong's 13th Tour de France appeared to be plagued by the bad luck one might expect to accompany the number 13, I would not being paying for TiVo.

To be fair, I did a little research on Facebook etiquette, and in the limited time I spent (I didn't want to spend all day on Facebook when I still had several hours of Tour coverage to watch in spite of the spoiler), I found no advice about not giving away results of sporting events that others might not have seen yet. Someone please update Time Magazine's rules of "How Not To Be Hated On Facebook."

I get it that TiVo is a relatively new invention, but it is older than Facebook. So which addiction am I quitting? Well, they say the easiest habits to break are the newest ones.